‘I’ll do it later.’
The way Fran said it had finality uppermost in her tone, so Penny let it drop. None of her business, she supposed.
‘OK then. Shall we do the east wing first? If we go full throttle, we can be finished in an hour. More time for drinking coffee.’
‘Or more time for chatting to Harry?’ Fran was teasing, but it was also a tactic to move the conversation on. While it had been the ideal opportunity to talk to Penny about wages, about how she felt about the hotel in that respect, Fran had baulked at theidea. Seeing Madame Beaufoy would be an equally effective way to find out the salary structure at the hotel. So, Fran wasn’t sure why she was loath to get on with it and ask. It was possible that Madame Beaufoy was so on the ball that she would instantly link Fran’s name with the suite which had been booked for her and was now languishing empty, and thereby blow her cover. But would that even matter? Fran was here under the employ of Wilding Holdings; she could do as she liked.
Except belligerence hadn’t ever been Fran’s forte, and the whole point of taking this approach was geared far more in the favour of the chateau staff, so ruining the whole plan on day two seemed counterproductive.
And maybe she’d been thrown off by her conversation with Johnny in the car park. By his determination to apologise for his brother’s behaviour. By his willingness to search for a random cat while he was supposed to be enjoying his trip to the Loire. By her sudden impatient desire to speak to him again and find out what he’d discovered.
Penny must have some kind of an internal clock, Fran decided, as they climbed the turret steps into the honeymoon suite with a few of the sixty minutes left to tick down. Not that the time mattered, because there remained a whole raft of jobs to complete, regardless of how long any of it took.
But the unsettled nature of her thoughts crowded back in on Fran as Penny headed into the bathroom to clean it, leaving Fran to sort out Johnny’s bedroom. There wasn’t much that needed to be tidied, no clothes strewn on the carpet, or wet towels over the backs of chairs. The man seemed to have been house-trained particularly well. He’d thrown the quilted cover into the wardrobe as he had the previous day, and although Fran folded the cover to make it more of an organised and compact bundle, less of a scrunched pile of fabric, she left it in there.
It wasn’t any of that which tipped her unsettled thoughts over the edge, though. The confusion peaked when she went to make the bed, pulled back the covers to find nothing there. No pyjamas or sleeping shorts. Nothing to fold and tuck under the pillow.
Fran plumped the pillows, pulled the duvet flat and smoothed down the whole thing, doing her best to ignore the heat rising across her neck, the sudden dryness in her mouth.
Who cared if the bloke slept naked? She and Penny had come across all sorts in the rooms they’d already done, and none of that had her coming over all Edwardian lady-in-a-corset.
Fran was a grown woman, with a life reclaimed and remodelled after taking, frankly, way too long to even begin to make sense of her experience with Victor. The last thing she needed was to start feeling ridiculous over someone she’d spoken to for no more than four minutes.
And yet, as Penny sauntered out of the bathroom, surreptitiously checking everything Fran had done as they left the room, Fran couldn’t dampen her confusion, or the hope that maybe Johnny really did like cats. Felt the need to hold on to the rope banister which curved its way down the spiral turret stairs for fear she might miss a step.
Part-way through his search of the immaculately manicured shrubbery bordering the car parking area, Johnny was regretting his choice of trousers. Picked to be casual and yet smart enough to team with a tailored shirt for the visit to the vineyard, his slim-legged chinos weren’t giving much in the way of flexibility, especially where bending low enough to fumble around in the fuchsia bushes was concerned.
Suffice to say, Johnny gave it his best shot, but with no sign of anything other than last winter’s leaf litter beneath the plants, was relieved to be able to straighten up. As he adjusted thematerial from where it had ridden up his legs and gathered around his knees, as well as other places, he heard a voice.
‘Avez-vous perdu quelque chose?’
The voice was accompanied by the lithe figure of an older man, rake in one hand, his time and temperature-weathered features quirked into an expression of amusement. ‘You lose something, Monsieur?’
Tempting though it was to pretend he’d dropped his car keys, Johnny opted for honesty.
‘It’s a funny story, actually,’ he began, then noted the glaze of incomprehension settling over the man’s expression. Swapping to French, Johnny garnered a wide smile of comprehension from the guy, until Johnny explained what he was looking for, and why. He paused as the man’s expression darkened. Wrapping up his explanation, Johnny asked the groundskeeper if he knew where the cat lived. The man all but exploded.
After the tirade subsided, Johnny had learnt two things. Number one, out of all the many and varied things he hated, the cat absolutely topped the groundskeeper’s list, and number two, the cat was definitely of no fixed abode. Several other, less relevant matters were also covered, including the impossible nature of the extreme summer weather this year in terms of horticulture, and the resilience of a particular infestation of beetles currently inhabiting a nearby hedge. The groundskeeper re-emphasised how much he disliked the stray cat, in case Johnny hadn’t fully got the message the first time around, and that should he manage to set hands on the mangy creature – Johnny thought that was a close enough translation – then the animal would have no need for further oxygen.
It seemed Red had as many foes as he had fans. Perhaps it was time for Johnny to pick a side.
Although with precious little in the way of new information, he wasn’t sure Fran would be much impressed with his work so far. Back in his room, Johnny changed into swimming shorts and headed for the pool, intent on allowing the rhythm of a long swim to clear his mind. After that he wanted to FaceTime his daughter, find out what she’d been up to, and maybe grab a late lunch.
And if, by then, he had still managed to dodge Noel and the rest of the group, he might take himself off for a walk around the grounds. After all, he was supposed to be on holiday, he should be free to choose whatever he wanted to do. And like his daughter’s first favourite book, he could go on a hunt, but rather than searching for a bear, he would search for a ginger cat.
Chapter 9
Harry whistled along to a tune on the radio, chopping in time to the Europop beat. It was probably corny to say he had never felt happier than he did right now, but corny or not it was the truth.
His situation wasn’t perfect. There were plenty of inescapable weights pressing themselves against him, plenty of decisions he knew he had to make, plenty to be unhappy about if he allowed himself to sink. And, in all honesty, some decent music wouldn’t hurt, either. Snow Patrol perhaps. Or something by Lewis Capaldi rather than all the synthesised bass he thought had gone out of vogue in the eighties, but which seemed to remain very muchà la modeon the continent.
But none of it was going to dampen his mood this evening, because this evening Louis had allowed him a go with one of his Wüsthof cheffing knives. Had allowed him to chop the onions for a sauce base with one of his precision blades. Harry was well aware it would mean little to anyone who wasn’t serious about working with food, but proper chef knives could become more precious to their owners than almost any other possession. There was a joke about what a chef would save from the kitchens in the event of a fire – and it was always their knives.
Harry didn’t own any knives of the quality of the one currently in his hand. But he would, one day. The weight of it was distributed perfectly, it made mincing the onions effortless. It had some manner of a special hexagonal-patterned coating on the handle, so there was no chance of his fingers slipping, which was just as well – Harry winced at the thought of how easily this knife would cut through just about anything.
He’d told Penny that this was exactly the brand of knife he would buy. Eventually. Once he’d accrued enough experience to be able to go for a senior position in a kitchen and had managed to prove to himself – amongst others – that his ambitions were more important to him than simply being crazy dreams. These blades weren’t cheap, either, and he’d already put everything into making this move to the continent; right now he had no spare cash for anything, let alone the hundreds of pounds it would take to buy this kind of equipment.
It was one of the things he liked the most about Penny, he’d decided. The fact that she could enter into a deadly serious conversation about a future as fantastical as any fictional scenario it would be possible to create. Her imagination matched her energy levels, both of which knew no bounds. They’d trawled through all sorts of crazy scenarios – the latest one featured the two of them working a season on one of the superyachts which sailed around the Med. Harry as the on-board chef, Penny as the chief stewardess. And according to Penny, with the tips they’d make from a few weeks at sea, Harry would be able to afford all the Wüsthof knives he wanted.
